


vide noir

by maybells



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: F/M, The Leibniz Dimension, like a badfic cryptid i emerge every two years to post shame, set sometime vaguely in phase 2, what if...they f....but it's self care tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:20:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23811457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybells/pseuds/maybells
Summary: "I know you can talk," Valkyrie said. "I've heard you in my world before."Silence, which somehow still disappointed her, though of course she hadn't expected him to answer. Suddenly—like a voice in a dream, only half-there, quiet and rasping—"What did I say?"She was taken aback, and she only stared at him at first, as though trying to process that he'd actually spoken. Then, "My name," Valkyrie said. "You just said my name."
Relationships: Valkyrie Cain/Lord Vile, Valkyrie Cain/Skulduggery Pleasant
Comments: 10
Kudos: 74





	vide noir

**Author's Note:**

> _Many nights have I heard her voice_  
>  _Whisper my name without making a noise_   
> _Calling out from a pure, black void_  
> 
> 
> in this house we are understood by lord huron and lord huron only
> 
> this is set in some nebulous time during phase two, probably post-midnight or just broadly post-resurrection, but diverges before seasons of war for obvious reasons 

_Drip, drip, drip._

The strange, distant trickle of water was the only thing she could hear. A few hours ago there had been moans and occasional screaming, but aside from the dripping the dungeon was silent now. Though it made her uneasy, Valkyrie was glad for the quiet at last. Her head hurt enough as it was. They hadn't pummeled her too badly, but she had taken a few blows to the face which weren't treating her kindly now. In her experience, they rarely did.

She sat there in the dark, feeling the cold air probe the cut on her cheek, and let the voice in her head tell her how stupid she had been. How stupid to shunt over here without Skulduggery, confident that she could handle whatever waited for her in this world. It had been over five years since they'd visited before, and in her desire to prove to Skulduggery, and probably even more so to herself, that even after all that time away she was still competent, could still take care of herself on a case, she'd gotten herself thrown into this dungeon—again—in a world that wasn't her own. Skulduggery didn't even know she was here—she hadn't told him. He'd probably figure it out eventually, eventually he would come to save her, but who knew if she would even still be alive? She doubted she would live past the day, when Mevolent got his hands on her.

She shook her head, and tried to let the unhelpful misery drain away. If she let herself think like that, it was already over. No, she was going to be fine. She was going to escape, somehow, and make it back to her world, and everything would be alright. It was what she had to do. It was what she _did_. Usually. Maybe. Probably. But it was difficult not to let the self-pitying thoughts consume her. She didn't have anything to take her mind off them, after all. Darquesse had popped up early, had taunted her a little, and she'd at least proved to be a good distraction. But what little power remained to her wasn't enough to free Valkyrie from here. She'd faded away a few hours into Valkyrie's confinement. Or she thought it had been hours. Time passed strangely here.

It seemed perhaps twenty minutes later, though who knew how long it had really been, when Valkyrie heard a door open and a man's voice saying something muffled and indistinct. She froze, heard the footsteps walking towards her. Her heart raced as her body began to kick into fight or flight mode. This was it, her best chance of escape—when the guard came to get her, she'd have to overwhelm them, have to knock them out and hope she could find the key. She had to admit, it didn't seem likely, especially since they had the benefit of their magic and she didn't. She figured that if she died in the struggle, well, at least she wouldn't be tortured first. That was something.

She lie in wait, her whole body tense, muscles ready to spring into action, but just when the footsteps seemed like they were about to curve into her cell, they stopped, and she realized there had been two people walking, muddling the sound together. They began to move again, as one led the other into the cell next to Valkyrie's. She heard chains rattling, and wondered if this person was being hung up on the wall, or if they were allowed a generous length of chain like she was. No one spoke. She heard a brief scuffle as the footsteps who presumably were the guard turned to leave—it sounded like the prisoner had attempted to grab him—but she heard a clang of metal and the guard resumed his leave. She heard the sound of him grow fainter, heard the door open once more, then close. There was silence again.

Valkyrie let out a breath, the tension easing from her body. Then a new tension entered as she wondered who had just been thrown in here with her. This section of the dungeon had been empty, apart from her—now she had a companion. Maybe they could help each other escape. Or her new dungeon-mate could try to kill her on sight. At this point, it could really go either way. 

She decided to wait and see if they would wander over into her cell. Minutes passed, or seemed to. She heard no movement from the other chamber. 

Dammit. Valkyrie took a shaky breath. "Hello?" she said into the open darkness, loud enough to be heard. 

There was no answer. Maybe the guard had knocked whoever it was unconscious. If that was the case, it would be a good chance to take a peek at them, and see what she was dealing with here. Valkyrie stood, and walked the six feet to the entryway of the other cell—about half of her chain's allowance. 

It was difficult to make out details in the dark, and her eyes struggled to adjust to the focus, and then Valkyrie saw who it was, and jumped back, barely stifling a yell.

A measure of feet to her right, Lord Vile sat with his back against the wall. He looked up at her, and tilted his head.

They stared at each other. Neither moved.

“What are you doing here?” Valkyrie said eventually. She was surprised that she could speak; her mouth was dry. But Vile wasn’t trying to kill her yet—that was something. She hoped. 

He didn't say anything. Not exactly a surprise. 

The light was strange here, even though her eyes had been given ample time to adjust. The dim flames from the magical torches flickered ominously—although any light would probably be ominous in a dungeon—and the shadows blinked back and forth. Vile seemed to pull the darkness towards him, attracting it almost passively, simply by the very fact of his being. It threw the whole effect of the room into disorder.

She tried to calm herself down a little. If Vile was here, it meant that his magic was bound. He couldn't send those shadows slicing into her. And he was chained, like she was; here, in this moment, he proved as little threat to her as he ever could. And if he was here...if he was here, it had to mean something. Something had changed. Maybe it was political; there were surely things going on in this world now at the top that she didn't know about. She could use that. Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe it could mean a thousand things.

“Why are you here?” she tried again. 

Quiet. Only the little _drip, drip, drip_. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Frustration was steadily building up inside of her; the little spark of hope that had flared when she heard another prisoner come in was now dwindling fast. The universe, it seemed, was refusing to make anything easy. 

Persistence wasn’t going to do any good, she knew. She was in a dungeon, in an alternate dimension, with Lord Vile. It was ridiculous to keep standing here, talking to him like this, like she was on a case and he was a suspect who was reluctant to speak up. But she was so irritated, with herself and with the situation, with the aching behind her temples, and with the way that his head was tilted still, that, absurdly, she tried again. 

"I know you can talk," Valkyrie said. "I've heard you in my world before."

Silence, which somehow still disappointed her, though of course she hadn't expected him to answer. Suddenly—like a voice in a dream, only half-there, quiet and rasping—"What did I say?"

She was taken aback, and she only stared at him at first, as though trying to process that he'd actually spoken. Then, "My name," Valkyrie said. "You just said my name."

No reply. Of course not.

"Well," Valkyrie said, “okay. Fine. I'm going to go back over there. If you're not going to help, I'll just have to get out of here on my own."

She turned. She started to move, to walk away.

"Why I'm here," came the rasping voice behind her.

Valkyrie turned again. She waited.

"You were here. In this world. Before."

She gave a small, guarded nod. "A few years ago, yeah."

"You were with him," Vile said after a moment. His words came almost haltingly. "In the palace."

She didn't know what he meant at first, and then she realized, and said, "With Skulduggery?"

"I saw him," Vile said. She remembered it, the way Vile had looked at Skulduggery and briefly halted, had tilted his head in a gesture that was so familiar to her it almost made her uneasy, to see it performed by someone else.

That wasn't the only time she had seen him in this dimension, of course. She remembered him down in these same dungeons as she and the Resistance escaped, shadows tearing the people beside her apart. His black silhouette in the meadow, knives of darkness slicing Ghastly in half. The atmosphere charged with chaos and panic and fear.

Vile kept talking, slowly, like each syllable was its own strenuous effort.. "It had been...a long time...since I'd recalled. Who I was...before. I had mostly...forgotten. At first...it had little effect. But I started...to remember. More and more. It became...a distraction."

Slowly, cautiously, her whole body sore and tired, Valkyrie found herself leaning back against the side of the wall and sliding down, until she sat with her knees against her chest, and her shackled hands slung around them. There were still about seven feet of cold stone floor between them.

"I started...to change," Vile continued. "The rage...that had propelled me...went out."

Valkyrie looked at him, and a thought suddenly struck her. "You betrayed Mevolent," she said, "didn't you?"

Vile inclined his head, ever so slightly, a movement almost invisible in the dark.

"But..."

"It was...unsuccessful," said Vile.

"But I don't understand," Valkyrie replied. "If you—you know, if you stopped giving into the darkness—if you're getting control of your rage—why are you still, well, you? Why haven't you taken the armor off and turned into Skulduggery again?"

There was a long moment of silence. "I don't know...that it's possible...to separate myself from him," Vile said at last. That voice, so lovely once, she knew, was wretched now, as though it tortured him to speak. "We aren't separate...entities, anymore. We've been...one man...for hundreds of years."

"Oh," Valkyrie said. It made sense. He had been like this for much longer than the Skulduggery she knew had been. The man sitting now in front of her, the shadows still lapping at his feet, was trapped at some foreign state in-between. Half one person, and half the other.

She thought of the knives cutting into Ghastly again. Maybe the ratio was a little less than half-and-half.

"So, that's why you're here," she said. "You tried to betray Mevolent."

Another little incline of a nod.

"Well, okay. That's great. So...maybe we're on the same side here, a little."

Vile didn't answer that. Instead: "You know him," he said. "In your world."

"Skulduggery?" Valkyrie said. "Yes. Of course. I've known him for a long time. I—he's the one who brought me into all this. He's my best friend." She took a deep breath. "He's my partner."

"But you came here...without him."

Valkyrie looked down at her knees. It was a question, but one without an answer, or at least with an answer full of things she didn't know how to say. She thought of the distance that had stretched between them like a crack in the earth. She didn’t want to look inside it. She didn’t want to acknowledge that it was there. Because then she would have to find the courage and the energy and the strength to jump back across, where he knelt at the edge of it, where he had been kneeling for five years, offering his hand. 

"It was stupid," Valkyrie said at last. "I don't know why I did."

Vile sat with that for a while. Then, "You plan to escape." The more he spoke, the smoother his voice became, and the more she could hear a hint of her Skulduggery in it. Maybe it was simply raspy with disuse. The awful loneliness of that struck her, that maybe Vile hadn't spoken to anyone in dozens or even hundreds of years, and despite the terrible things he had done she felt a little pity rise in her.

"Yeah," Valkyrie said. "I have to get back to my dimension. World to save out there, you know. Murder to solve. A dog to feed." She hoped Omen wouldn't mind stopping by to take care of Xena for a little longer than planned.

"How?"

"Well, I haven't exactly gotten that far yet. I don't know where the Shunter who brought me here is, so that's eventually going to be a problem. I'll figure it out as I go." She paused, worried suddenly that she was giving too much information away. Her muscles and her mind had started to relax. But she was talking to Lord Vile, and just because he was chained and his voice was starting to sound more familiar didn't mean that she could trust him at all. She turned her head to stare at the wall in front of her. It was dark and gray and rough like cobblestone, and it was stained by something that was most likely blood.

"Anyway, the first item on the agenda is getting out of this dungeon," she continued. Vile probably didn't know what an agenda was. "The first priority, I mean. So, I'm going to do that."

"How?" Vile asked again.

"Great question," Valkyrie said with a shrug. "My plan was to wait until the guard came in, punch him, grab his keys, and run. If you have anything better to add to it, be my guest." She looked over at him again. "But I could use some help."

"You trust me," Vile replied, very slowly, "to help?"

Valkyrie studied him. He was so different from the Skulduggery produced by Smoke's corruption—she thought that Skulduggery corrupted had probably been more frightening to her than Vile, because there had been no external change, no visual indicator of his darkness, no sharp armor of shadow to warn her that it wasn't her Skulduggery in there, or to explain it away. Vile, somehow, was easier to understand. Vile was less personal. Vile was a more honest form.

"I don't know," she said, leaning her head back against the wall. "Maybe. I mean, if you really...if you're really ready to give up on all of it. To stop letting the darkness in." Her bruised shoulder rubbed uncomfortably against the harsh contours of the stone behind her. "The Skulduggery I know was Lord Vile once too, you know. Eventually, he stopped. It can be done."

"Where did he go," Vile said, "after?"

"He went back into the world," said Valkyrie, "and started trying to do good. He started helping people. He tried to atone. I mean, the circumstances were a little different. The war was still on. But he..." She remembered, suddenly, when she'd realized that the divergence point between this world and hers could have been Lord Vile, the fact that in her world Skulduggery had re-emerged, and in this world he didn't. She swallowed; she couldn't bring herself to say that bit aloud.

"It's never too late," she said. "To come back."

Vile was silent for a few minutes. Then he moved; his hands, shackled in front of him like hers, started to rise. It was the first time he had moved anything except his head since she'd first come into his cell.

Valkyrie watched, her body tense again, on guard, as Vile reached up and placed his hands on both sides of his helmet.

She watched as he lifted it up, and the shackles clinked and the helmet came off.

Shadows rolled and writhed out from under it like mist. And then, beneath the shadow, she saw his skull. It was startlingly bright where the dim light from the torches reached it. Before she could stop herself, Valkyrie was moving closer, scooting on her knees until they were only about two feet apart on the floor. She was sitting in the middle of it, now, right in front of him.

He looked at her. He was wearing his original skull—of course he was—unlike Skulduggery, he would never have lost it. His eye sockets were empty and dark.

"Oh," Valkyrie said. "Wow. Okay. Do you...do you feel any different?"

Vile tilted his head. She thought that it meant yes. She wondered how long it had been since he'd last removed any piece of his armor.

"You know," Valkyrie said, curling her legs underneath her so she was half-kneeling, "there was a point in time when I became someone else, too. I mean, it's a pretty long story, but the point is that I did terrible things. I killed people. I killed so many people. And it wasn't really me, but it was someone who came from me. For a while, I thought it would overshadow everything else I did, everything else I am. I think that's why he and I are so close. A big part of it, anyway. I understand things about him that no one else can understand. And he understands those same things about me. And we both know that it's always possible to come back. We remind each other of that."

 _We’ll just have to help each other find our way back to the light,_ Skulduggery had said.

She took a deep breath. "And Skulduggery," she said, "my Skulduggery, he's a good man. He's the best man I know. And who he is now eclipses whatever he did. I know it's not exactly the same, but that person is in you too. Somewhere."

She was rambling now. Vile was still staring at her with Skulduggery's face. She thought of it as a face; of course, in reality it was only the bones of one. The sunken cave of a nose. The hollow of a cheek. The white plain of a forehead. Every angle and indent familiar to her. Comforting.

"There is little," Vile said, "for me to do."

"Well, I think trying to kill Mevolent was a pretty good start," said Valkyrie. "Even if it didn't work."

"The Resistance will not have me."

"No, probably not," Valkyrie admitted. In her mind she saw him in the meadow again, all of the darkness and the blood. "But there are other places you could go. There are other ways you could change the world."

"I don't know," Vile said. "If I still can."

Without thinking, Valkyrie found herself moving even closer to him, scooting across the floor again, before she hit the end of her shackles' allowance and the chain went taut and still. That was probably a good thing, she thought. Or at least it was until she blinked, and in that fraction of an instant saw that Vile had moved, too. The hard metal of his knee now brushed against the fabric over hers.

Valkyrie swallowed. She said, "You just have to try." Then she cleared her throat. "But we have to escape before anyone can do anything. You have anything to contribute, here? Something that could help?

Vile didn't speak, but out of the corner of her eye she saw the shadows begin to move again. It was more unsettling now that she was so near to him. A piece of one moved away from the rest and passed for a moment over her thigh.

Valkyrie almost gasped. "How are you doing that? You're bound."

"I'm uncertain," Vile said. "My power is...limited. But some remains to me."

Maybe it made sense; the essence of him was magical, after all. Magic holding him together, magic swirling through his armor, magic keeping his consciousness pinned to his body. There was probably only so much that binding could contain.

"Okay, we can definitely use that. Do you know how much you can do?"

He moved his head a little to the side—that was a no.

She thought about it. She didn't want to kill the guard, if it was possible to avoid it. But it was difficult to imagine how the shadows could knock someone out; they seemed so immaterial. Maybe they would be better used as a distraction.

"How much control do you have?" she asked. "Do you think you could do something that's maybe not lethal?"

He tilted his head again.

"I'm trying to be a pacifist," she said. "It's kind of inconvenient sometimes."

He kept staring at her. She could almost feel his eyebrows raise.

"Look, punching doesn't count this time, okay? Work with me here."

In response, the shadows moved again. They shifted across the dark floor, deep black moving over gray; they climbed up the wall, amber where it echoed the dim, ochre light; one broke away again, almost the shape of a whip, and it passed once more over her thigh, lingering this time. It drifted up, and started to curl around her waist. She held herself very still. It didn't hurt her. She couldn't feel anything over the protective leather of her clothes.

It climbed a little further, and touched the skin of her neck. Her breath caught.

"That's....precise," Valkyrie managed to say.

It felt—soft. Almost weightless. She didn't know how it felt like anything. She thought, a shadow is just the absence of light.

She heard the clink of metal, and she looked down and saw that Vile had grabbed one of his gauntlets. He was pulling at it. She realized that he was trying to take it off.

"Here," Valkyrie said. She didn't know why she said it. She didn't know why she reached over and held onto the gauntlet. The moment her fingers closed around it she almost withdrew in shock; it was so cold that it was painful to the touch.

Pushing the sensation away, she gripped it; she pulled, with Vile's other hand beside hers, and together they managed somehow slide the tight metal apart, the shackle fastened higher up on his arm, allowing this piece to slide away. It dropped to the ground, clattering loudly in the quiet of the space. Valkyrie winced a little at the sound.

Vile was staring down at the bare bones of his hand, long and thin. How long had it been since he'd seen them?

The shadow-piece was still darting across Valkyrie's body. She felt a tickle as it tucked itself around her ear. She nearly laughed at the surprise of it.

"You can control it," she said.

Vile said, "Yes."

Something shifted slightly underneath her; she glanced down and realized that to pull the gauntlet off she had moved practically into his lap. She was straddling him now, her legs on either side of his. Blood shot to her face with a deep and sudden warmth. She didn't move away. His leg stirred again, right where she was sitting atop it, and she let out a hard breath and something in her belly flipped and she didn't know how, suddenly, it had turned into this, and—

—she felt ridiculous; any second he was going to push her away and question her, accuse her with his empty eyes and she was going to feel immeasurably embarrassed, unbelievably ashamed of herself. He moved his still-gauntleted hand and she thought, this is it, he's going to end it now. Instead he grabbed her hip, right where it met the bend of her thigh.

They looked at each other

and then Valkyrie was reaching down, oh, God, she didn't know why—

she was reaching down to the front of her pants and pulling the threads of the zipper apart and it was ridiculous and the pale bones of Vile's hand, which was Skulduggery's hand, slid up the fabric of her pants, and she wanted it, and he tugged the rest of the zipper down and her shoulders arched back and "Ah," came from her throat and he touched her, and kept touching her, one hand clasping her waist and the other inside.

The cadence, together, up and down.

Absurdly, with what little lucidity she had, she thought of Abyssinia. She wondered if—

She didn't want to think about Abyssinia. She didn't even know if Abyssinia existed in this world. She didn't exist right now. Nothing existed except the play of darkness and light across the walls of the room, and the shadow winding around her neck like a caress, like a breath, and the flex of her hips, and the rhythm of his hand. She heard the heavy drag of their chains across the floor. She heard the flicker of her own breathing.

"Your name," she heard Vile say.

She looked at him. Her eyes were heavy.

"When he spoke." His fingers twisted. The joints of his hand. "He said your name. What is it?"

It was a moment before she could bring herself to reply. The sound of her heart in her ears, wild and rushed. "Valkyrie," she got out, unsteadily.

He repeated it back to her, voice low. "Valkyrie."

She closed her eyes. She held onto the sharp, cold shoulder of his armor, the side of his skull. She felt him inside of her. The soft shadow curling around her mouth, her shoulder, her hips. His gauntleted hand rose, once, to brush the cut on her cheek. She heard it again, in that half-familiar voice: Valkyrie, Valkyrie, Valkyrie.

—

Somehow, she fell asleep. She hadn't meant to, of course; she wanted to be awake when the guard next came in, wanted to be alert, and, as much as possible, prepared. But she woke on her side on the floor of the dungeon, her eyes blinking open and re-adjusting to the dark. She'd slept on her injured shoulder. It quietly ached.

She raised her head a little and her glance moved up, up, up, until it found him, sitting again with his back against the wall a foot or two away. He'd taken his gauntlet from the floor and replaced it on his hand, but his head was still bare.

"No one's come in?" she asked. It came from her throat sounding scratchy. She wished she had something to drink.

"Not yet," Vile said. He wasn't looking at her strangely. That was good. Watching him now, with hazy vision still returning from sleep, she saw the harsh, jagged angles of his armor, his body an alien, inhuman thing. It didn't make her afraid. She still felt the smooth, frigid metal against her fingertips, her skin.

She nodded. Then she grimaced against the soreness of her body as she sat up. The new tenderness between her thighs.

How long had she slept? Whatever fragile sense of time she'd held onto had entirely fled from her now. Vile probably didn't happen to have a watch on him.

"Well," she said after a moment had passed. "I don't know if we ever really came up with a plan."

Vile said, "We did not." She thought she could hear a tickle of something new in his voice. Amusement.

"That's fine," she said, pushing a tangle of hair from her face. Strength was flowing into her limbs again. Her belly still felt warm. There was a lightness bouncing around inside her chest, something optimistic and bright. "You know, I've found the best plans are the ones you just make up along the way. Although then they aren't really plans, I guess. But that's a technicality."

Just then, a sudden noise creaked from the right. A heavy door cracked, then pushed open all the way, then closed. The staccato of steady footsteps coming through.

She turned to Vile. “Showtime,” she said. “You ready?”

His head angled ever so slightly, just a fraction of an inch, into a nod. He pulled away from the wall and braced himself onto his ankles, ready to move. He was looking at her.

Valkyrie felt herself grin. Adrenaline quickened the beat of her heart like a drum. “Okay,” she said, glancing back towards where the guard would come through. “Good. Then let’s get out of here.” 


End file.
